Attempts by Big Content to accuse YouTube of piracy have crashed into the iceberg. Viacom had been hoping to squeeze a billion dollars from YouTube claiming that it allowed pirated content on the site.
Viacom sued YouTube, a video-sharing site owned by Google, alleging that YouTube had engaged copyright infringement by allowing its users to upload and view hundreds of thousands of videos owned by Viacom without permission.
On April 18, 2013, judge Stanton issued another order granting summary judgment in favor of YouTube. Judge Stanton ruled in favor of YouTube on all four issues finding that YouTube had no actual knowledge of any specific instance of infringement of Viacom's works, and therefore could not have "willfully blinded itself".
The court found that YouTube did not have the "right and ability to control" infringing activity because "there is no evidence that YouTube induced its users to submit infringing videos, provided users with detailed instructions about what content to upload or edited their content, steered users to infringing videos, or otherwise interacted with infringing users to a point where it might be said to have participated in their activity.
The complaint contended that the defendants "engage in, promote and induce" the infringement, and that they had deliberately built up a library of infringing works in order to increase YouTube's traffic and advertising revenue. In total, Viacom claimed three counts of direct infringement, and three counts of indirect infringement, specifically inducement, contributory infringement and vicarious infringement.
The first time Viacom sued Google about the infringement was on March 13, 2007, not long after Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion. Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube. So far it has gone nowhere, with mostly orchestrated legal manoeuvrings in the dark.
Viacom's plan came unstuck when district judge Louis Stanton resolved everything in favor of YouTube, and once again dismissed the case.
He also ruled that YouTube did not induce its users to commit copyright infringement or otherwise interact with its users to a point where it might be said to have participated in anything they might have done.
In July 2008, during the pretrial discovery phase, Viacom won a court ruling requiring YouTube to hand over data detailing the viewing habits of every user who had ever watched videos on the site. The move led to concerns that the viewing habits of individual users could be identified through a combination of their IP addresses and log in names. However, not long afterwards, Google and Viacom agreed to allow Google to anonymize all the data before handing it over to Viacom.
In 2010 a judge ruled in YouTube's favor, granting a summary motion to dismiss the case. But an appeals court reversed the decision, sending the case back to court. This time the judge decided that YouTube was protected by the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, notwithstanding evidence of intentional copyright infringement.
In August 2012, the appeal was argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. It was then decided on April 5, 2012.
While Viacom and YouTube have been working together of late, it seems that Viacom is not giving up yet. In a statement, Viacom said it will appeal the ruling because it ignores the opinions of the higher courts and completely disregards the rights of creative artists.
It wants a jury to weigh up the facts of this case and what it calls the overwhelming evidence that YouTube willfully infringed on Viacom rights.